Cebu governor suspends P20 rice sale

After a day it was launched, Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia suspended the rice sale of P20 per kilo due to a sudden increase on the indigent official list.

Garcia cited a town that had 9,000 indigents but in the official list from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), it is only 6,000. She refused to name the town.

The governor revealed that the indigents have increased to more than 303,000 from the DSWD official list of 199,000 households only.

The Sugbo Mercado Barato (SMB) or Cebu cheap market was launched in Talisay City with House Speaker Martin Romualdez as a special guest.

One of SMB's components was the selling of rice at P20 per kilo.

The suspension is to allow corrections to be made in the final list of deserving recipients after local governments submitted lists that exceeded 100,000 household beneficiaries.

"I will not mention which LGU, but there's one LGU where the DSWD identified 6,000. But the list that reached us was 9,000. That's arguable, I think, but I am bound by the NHTS-PR (National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction)," Garcia said.

Garcia said the provincial government has allocated P100 million for the purchase of 80,000 bags of NFA rice, and another P100 million for the purchase of commercial rice that will be sold at lower prices simultaneously.

She added that each bag of NFA rice costs P1,250 or P25 per kilo.

The province absorbs the loss of P5 for every kilo of NFA rice sold to selected beneficiaries, which amounts to an initial loss of P20 million from the P100 million budget.

Each poor household with the QR-coded ID card can avail of the P20 per kilo NFA rice up to a maximum of only five kilos a week at the SMB venue in the respective towns and cities except the cities of Cebu and Lapu-Lapu which are not under the administration of the province.

"There are poor people but the poorest ones first because the supply is limited," the governor reiterated.

"We are resuming possibly this week. We sent out an advisory to the mayors to suspend the selling until we shall have counterchecked and revalidated the list," Garcia said.